Forty-three years ago this month, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th president of these United States, was felled in Dallas by Lee Harvey Oswald, a communist and dishonorably discharged Marine.
For most of my life, November 22 was always commemorated as one of the darkest days in American history. In recent years, such commemorations seem to have been fading.
President Kennedy was riding that day in a motorcade with his wife, Jackie, Texas Gov. John Connally and the latter’s wife, Idanell, and Texan Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Kennedy had come to Texas to shore up a rift among Texas Democrats.
As soon as she saw her husband had been hit with gunfire, Mrs. Kennedy showed herself willing to sacrifice her own life to save her husband’s. She threw herself across her husband to shield his body from further gunfire as if she were a secret service agent, rather than America’s First Lady. Alas, it was too late.
Gov. Connally also was wounded, and his wife, Idanell Brill "Nellie" Connally, helped save his life by “pull[ing] the Governor onto her lap, and the resulting posture helped close his front chest wound (which was causing air to be sucked directly into his chest around his collapsed right lung).”
Later that day, aboard Air Force One, Vice President Johnson was sworn in as America’s 36th President.
On April 10, 1963, Oswald had attempted to assassinate right wing Army Gen. Edwin Walker; one hour after assassinating the President, he murdered Dallas Patrolman J.W. Tippit, before being arrested in a Dallas movie theater, during which Oswald tried to shoot yet another policeman. Two days later, Oswald was himself murdered by Jack Ruby, as lawmen sought to transfer Oswald from police headquarters to the Dallas City Jail.
Jack Kennedy has become, like his erstwhile fling, Marilyn Monroe, a Rorschach Test, onto which people (particularly leftists) project their preoccupations. Thus do conspiracy obsessives – “theorists” is much too kind a term – project the notion that the President’s assassination had issued out of a conspiracy so immense, including at least two assassins, and dozens of string pullers and marionettes, with the identity of the specific participants – the Cosa Nostra, the CIA, Fidel Castro, et al. – depending on the imaginings of the obsessive in question.
Likewise has Kennedy’s presidency been fetishized by left wing obsessives and family retainers, who have turned him into a socialist demigod who supported massive economic redistribution and radical “civil rights.”
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Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Sisyphus
You seem to be overlooking the obvious. Whether real or imagined, "image" is everything in politics. For starters, JFK was seen as charismatic, youthful and vigorous. He was an inspirational orator and physically attractive. He was quick-witted, funny, and smooth. Nixon, on the contrary, while undeniably intelligent, was largely seen as introverted, paranoid, awkward and dull. Such intangible qualities, or lack thereof, are fundamental to public perception and should not go unmentioned.
2 - Michael J. West
A couple of points.
First: the president who first got us involved in Vietnam was Harry Truman. The president who got us inextricably involved in Vietnam was unquestionably Lyndon Johnson. Kennedy unquestionably escalated involvement in between, but let's not exaggerate it.
Second: I don't dispute Nixon's genuine accomplishments, especially those of his foreign policy; nor do I dispute his intellect or political savvy. However, let's bear in mind that he contributed a great deal to his own "Demonization" by virtue of his massive abuse of power that turned the GOP against him as surely as the Democrats (lest they take ALL the blame for soiling his reputation).
I won't pretend Kennedy was a great president. His accomplishments, while impressive, were few. But since we're contrasting with Nixon, I can't pretend he was a great president, either. The good he did was outweighed by the bad--unfortunate but absolutely true.
3 - Dave Nalle
Nicholas, I don't have anything to really say in response to this article, but I do think it's one of your most interesting and I found it a good read. Keep up the good work.
Dave
4 - Baronius
Nick, I'm all for taking the Kennedy legend down a peg, especially as John's reputation still confers credibility onto Teddy. It's hard to believe that some people respect Ted Kennedy, much less voted for him in the 1980 primaries.
I'm not ready to redomesticate Nixon though. For all his merits, he was a sucker for intellectual novelty. Thus he could be talked into wage and price controls and Friedman's monetary policy. He couldn't resist the appeal of a crazy scheme, like going at Russia through China, or winning an election by breaking into the opponent's campaign headquarters. He was too clever for his own good.
Sisyphus, are you implying that the focus on image is a good thing?
5 - Mohjho
Excellent article Nicholas. Seems that most of our perceptions of great people are remembered as myth. Is there any historical figure that is not somehow understood through a biased story line?
As for Kennedy, your last paragraph is enough for me to label JFK as "pretty good". However I will always give that benefit to a leader that simply doesn't screw things up too badly.
However Kennedy was a privileged child of a wealthy and ambitious family and thus his true nature is suspect. Myth or no myth I'll stick with the facts, the hell with Camelot.
And then there is Nixon. I remember him well. He seemed a very nasty and uninteresting person. All his foreign policy gains seemed to be wiped out by his cynical betrayal of our political system. I still picture him next to Joseph McCarthy during the House Un-American Activities Committee. Nuff said.
6 - STM
Great article, although I'm a bit nonplussed by the comparisons with Richard Nixon, and especially the bit about Vietnam: true, it was Kennedy who upped the ante in Vietnam (and who left LBJ with more trouble than a bag full of cats) but Nixon had no choice in terms of getting America out of the war. It was already a lost cause and a defeat of monumental and tragic proportions.
In one of the more bizarre memories of my childhood (another was doing nuclear air raid drills underneath my school desk), I remember sitting with my parents in front of the TV watching the news of Kennedy's assasination, and my mother openly weeping.
That would be understandable if they were Americans but they weren't ... and we were living in England at the time. The whole of Britain went into mourning as if he'd been THEIR president, so when you're talking image, it had gone way beyond the shores of the US.
Also, his popularity there was in direct contrast to that of his father Joe, who was a reviled figure among Britons.
As the US ambassador in London at the time of the Battle of Britain and the subsequent night Blitz on London, and who, as a well-known anti-British, anti-semitic Nazi sympathiser had predicted the quick demise of Britain (which in the wake of Joe's gloomy forecast sent Goering's Luftwaffe literally crashing to Earth then fought on alone against the Nazis for another two years), begged Roosevelt not to side with Britain.
However, Roosevelt had become friends with Churchill and Kennedy was subsequently recalled to Washington but he lives on in the memories of Britons as a duplicitous and unpopular figure in their history, in no small part for his reputed dislike of Jews given the outcomes of the war.
That his son, barely 20 years later, went on to occupy their consciousness in such a way is quite amazing and a testment to Kennedy's own character as much as anything.
He was nothing if not the consummate politician and the right man for the right time. No other US president in recent history lives in the memories of non-Americans the way Kennedy does.
7 - Jet in Columbus
This is the biggest load of right-wing horseshit I've read in quite some time... and I've read a lot.
8 - STM
It's still a worthwhile alternative view of history, though Jet. I suppose Nicholas' politics will be his politics, but challenging perceptions is never a bad thing.
The interesting part about all this is that JFK's father was an avowed Nazi sympathiser and friend of the Viscountess, Lady Astor, the Virginian-born British parliamentarian who favoured appeasement with Hitler prior to WWII. So the two men would almost appear at first glance to be at opposite ends of the political spectrum.
I blame Joe's catholicism for his views, and John's clever pragmatism for his.
9 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Jet, STM,
I remember watching the debates between Nixon and Kennedy on TV as a child. Nixon looked like a thief who deserved to be hauled off to jail, while Kennedy looked like a media star. From watching the debate, it was obvious who had won. But many of those who had listened to it on radio, felt that Nixon had won. Why?
Because Nixon, the better debater, did not take into account the importance of the visual image. John Kennedy, whose father rooked people off in the cinema business as well as running illegal liquor, was always very aware of the importance of the visual image. He had learned it from his scum of a father.
It should be noted that John Kennedy learned more than that from his father. Joe Kennedy was dogged by his paramour, Gloria Swanson, whom he had dumped in 1930. John Kennedy, after having made the main thrust of his points with Marilyn Monroe, had her done in. She never bothered him, or anyone else, again.
Nixon was a typical CFR type fellow, who worked with folks like Nelson and Dave Rockefeller and who was far more dictatorial in style. This, in addition to the "old Nixon, new Nixon" images pushed by the media, made him a lot less popular than he could have been. Had he actually pushed the negative income tax proposal harder and backed it up with compensations for working mothers (part of the original plan), he would have wound up a lot more popular than he actually was, Watergate and all.
Nixon's policies were crafted the way von Bismarck's were. He upended the "liberal" side of the fence and took enough of their policies to make the "liberals" unhappy. But it was always clear who he really represented - the rich moneyed Ă©lite he wanted to be part of so bad.
10 - Jet in Columbus
Oh, I see, so it's okay to lay the sins of the father on the son...
I get it now.
11 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
No Jet,
Get some history right. "Jittery Joe" Kennedy, upon his return to Hyannisport in 1940, worked on getting his sons into the US senate, the governor's mansion or maybe even the white house. The first step was making sure they had combat records in the military. His first son, Joe Jr. died fighting WWII. His second son, John, nearly died in the Pacific, but came back alive. The third son, Robert, went to law school. So did the fourth son.
Joe Kennedy worked with what he had, and worked hard to teach his boys how to negotiate the not very pleasant world of climbing to the top. One of his lessons, I'm sure, was not to leave dissatisfied women lying around as liabilities, a problem that Joe Kennedy had in Gloria Swanson.
Another lesson was the importance of the visual image as connected to the voice. Swanson was one of the actresses who successfully made the transition from silent films to talkies, and Joe Kennedy was poking her right around the time she was doing so. He was also in the cinema distribution business right around that time, and saw the importance of a good media image of both looks and voice in terms of profits in his pocket.
So he learned by watching. He may have been a contemptible coward, but he was not stupid, and applied what he learned to his sons' benefit.
Each man carries his own sin, but John certainly learned from his daddy. And then he committed his own sins, which were worse in their own way.
12 - ss
"There is no record, to my knowledge, of Nixon ever censoring a political speech, much less one by a civil rights leader"
Nixon had an 'enemies list' that included journalists and political cartoonists.
Nixon authorized a program to discredit the anti war movement that included federal agents breaking into the office of Abbie Hoffman's psychiatrist. They did this under no legal authority, simply at the request of the executive branch.
Nixon made no secret of the fact he considered college protest criminal at best, treason at worst. Unarmed protesters were shot to death at Kent State and Jackson State while Nixon was in office. I'm not saying Nixon gave an order, but he did let it be known he wouldn't be horribly upset if something along these lines were to happen. And then it happened.
As 'defenders' of free speech and dissent go, Nixon was a little better than Vladimir Putin. Not by much though.
13 - Nicholas Stix
#1 â€" November 27, 2006 @ 02:06AM â€" Sisyphus
You seem to be overlooking the obvious. Whether real or imagined, "image" is everything in politics. For starters, JFK was seen as charismatic, youthful and vigorous. He was an inspirational orator and physically attractive. He was quick-witted, funny, and smooth. Nixon, on the contrary, while undeniably intelligent, was largely seen as introverted, paranoid, awkward and dull. Such intangible qualities, or lack thereof, are fundamental to public perception and should not go unmentioned.
Sorry, Sisyphus, but that is not the way it was. You are retroactively projecting the Camelot myth that was manufactured by the Democrat media after the election, onto Kennedy during his campaign. As for Nixon, you are repeating Democrat talking points, rather than describing public sentiment towards Nixon.
Had the American public seen JFK in such romanticized terms, and Nixon in such negative terms, Kennedy would have won in a landslide, rather than in the closest election of the 20th century, and only then, thanks to massive election fraud.
14 - Bliffle
Kennedy was not the angel the delusional democrats project, nor was Nixon the devil he is often portrayed as. The problem is that we, as voters and citizens, keep looking for angels to worship and devils to castigate. The solution? Stop considering personalities and start considering issues. There's no need for one to throw all their allegiance to one person and then abandon all reason. That way lies slavery.
15 - Baronius
SS, I always hear about the Enemies List, but as far as I know nothing ever happened to Nixon's enemies. There was talk of killing Jack Anderson, which is pretty terrifying. But it was never acted upon. Roosevelt had his opponents investigated by the early IRS; Johnson sent people to Goldwater rallies with itching powder. Nixon kept a list of Jews in the Department of Labor. Johnson investigated opponents' campaign staffs, looking for homosexuals. Kennedy's remarkable luck in close elections is suspicious (although I'm no expert on the subject). All in all, Nixon wasn't much worse than his predecessors, and nothing like Putin.
16 - Nancy
As pointed out by Ruvy, what Kennedy had most was relentless & brilliant PR, most of it concocted by those employed by his old man, Joe Kennedy, one of the most rapacious, ruthless, ambitious s.o.b.s ever to emerge on to the American political scene, & his maniacally social-climbing wife, Rose, a female political Machiavelli with a will & spine of steel who liked to project a faux image of ultra-pious domesticity. Until the death of Joe, Jr., John was nothing (relatively speaking). It was only after the death of his elder brother that the ferocious parental ambitions focused on him as the new Crown Prince of a future Kennedy Royal Family which Joe & Rose envisioned as taking over & dominating US politics for the next century, at least.
Most of John F.'s 'legends' are just that: smoke & mirrors, half-truths & romanticized lies that, repeated often enough by syncophantic (& paid off by Big Daddy Joe's money) media types, eventually came to be accepted as gospel. Even John's 'heroic' episode in WWII with the PT boat has been vastly exaggerated from the actual facts; & it has long been known (& even exposed) that his literary works weren't his at all, but the efforts of professional ghosters with his name on it. Stealing &/or taking credit for other people's work or ideas has long been a Kennedy tradition, dating from the very first bog-trotting Kennedy to come over in steerage back in the early 19th century, the ancestral Patrick, brewer of rotgut whiskey back when it was still legal, who kept a hole in the wall that became a "saloon" only decades later when it suited the family to upgrade their circumstances. The sorry episodes with Teddy all his life are symptomatic of the real Kennedy modus operandi: make lots of money, any way you can, and use it to buy what you want (or get you out of trouble). The Kennedy clan was able to do this because they also had a forged network & support group (in today's terminology) of Boston Irish Catholics plus the connivance of the very powerful as well as corrupt RC church - the Cardinal of Boston was early on a shield & staunch pillar of support of the Kennedy agenda, which in turn was supposed to provide a wedge of political power into US politics for the Vatican. One of the things most fascinating to historians or those of us who just like & appreciate political skullduggery in history is the incredible web of interlocking agendas & threads which was Bostonian/Irish American political history. And of course the Kennedys were the apex as well as the vanguard of it all.
In any event, Kennedy - in fact, the whole family - is vastly overrated. Only the untimely demise of all three of the most promising young males prevented them from utterly taking over the US political scene (as with most I-A RCs, the girls were ignored & relegated to breeding or ruling from behind the curtain, as it were). Understandably traumatized by the multiple assassinations of John & Robert, the 3rd generation of projected Kennedy powermongers never did materialize, except in very attentuated form. Frankly, in today's atmosphere of ultra-exposure, none of them would be able to operate in such a chrysalis of PR & fabricated imagery as did John F. or Bobby. Teddy is, quite literally, a political dinosaur, probably the last of his species, thank god.
Poor old Dick Nixon was his own victim, impaled by his own hubris, suspicions, & just plain nasty personality. He surely was one of the most unpleasant, vindictive, & vulgar men who ever made it to the top, unable to rise above his early defeats. Truly, he had some VERY good accomplishments while in office. Alas, he hoist himself on his own petard with his penchant for surrounding himself with such criminal sociopaths as Liddy, Mitchell, Haldeman, et al. A judge of character he was not, and in the end, that was what did him in, together with his thirst for "getting" all those he considered his enemies, real or imagined, which led to his rampant abuse of power. The man was his own worst enemy & never knew it. A true anomaly & a fascinating study in perverse character & wasted potential. I think had he been even a little less psychotic he would have been possibly one of our best presidents; he certainly had the moxie for it, but it was all misdirected. Unfortunately, in his day most of the modern anti-psychotics & antidepressants weren't available, even to the rich or powerful.
17 - Nancy
Nixon had the FBI investigating various supposed 'enemies' of his mind's imagining; unbeknownst to him, J. Edgar was also investigating HIM up the wahzoo, probably for future blackmail potential purposes, as he (J. Edgar, that is) did with everybody. I believe quite a few persons lost jobs, positions, or got their career paths truncated thanks to Nixon; like you, however, I never heard of any actual murders on the order of Putin's putative activities. Anybody know of anything or any investigations into such? I imagine most of it still is under national security blackout, even with the freedom of information act.
18 - ss
I'm not claiming that Nixon gave orders to have anyone murdered. I'm also not claiming that DC, particularly the FBI and the Oval Office, were free from abuse of power before Nixon.
Still, Nixon's response to an era that had an unusual amount of disruptive protest wasn't to control the disruption through legal channels and maintain the rights of dissenters. Nixon's response was to greatly expand the illegal activities the governement was already engaging in in an attempt to eliminate dissent; inside the beltway, in the media, and on the street.
And people did die at Kent State and Jackson State.
Again I'm not saying that Nixon ordered this or even did anything to specifically orchestrate either event.
Still, the fact that disruptive but unarmed protesters were gunned down-
Twice
-under the same administration that was expanding the illegal activities the governement was engaged in in an attempt to eliminate dissent...
Not as bad as Putin, I'll grant you that. No deliberate assainations carried out by thugs with a wink and a nod from the government.
But among American Presidents, Nixon came alot closer to that type of governing than he could ever excuse.
On the other hand, we can agree that Kennedy was a greatly over rated President.
19 - Nicholas Stix
Michael (#2), I wrote a long response to you, but got blocked, due to a forbidden word (“Error: [3103] Banned word”).
I have no idea what the word was, but have previously been told that such no-no words have something to do with spam. I just wrote to Christopher, to determine what the problem is.
20 - Nicholas Stix
#3 -- November 27, 2006 @ 14:09PM -- Dave Nalle
Nicholas, I don't have anything to really say in response to this article, but I do think it's one of your most interesting and I found it a good read. Keep up the good work.
Dave
Thanks, Dave.
21 - Dave Nalle
The banned words can often be unexpected. For example, off and on the word 'cialis' has been banned, causing the word 'socialist' to be banned as well because it's in there. Leading me to wonder if Cialis is a secret plot to drug Americans and turn them into socialists.
Dave
22 - Michael J. West
Awww, Nicholas, now you have my curiosity piqued. Can you give me a Cliff's Notes version of your long response?
23 - Nicholas Stix
#2 -- November 27, 2006 @ 09:54AM -- Michael J. West
A couple of points.
First: the president who first got us involved in Vietnam was Harry Truman. The president who got us inextricably involved in Vietnam was unquestionably Lyndon Johnson. Kennedy unquestionably escalated involvement in between, but let's not exaggerate it.
I cited Kennedy as I did, based on his having sent over 15,000 "military advisers" to South Vietnam (what do 15,000 military officers do in a nation as small as South Vietnam? They must have been tripping over each other all the time!) and Richard Reeves' point that JFK had toppled the Diem regime. Reeves evoked Colin Powell ("You break it, you own it."). Thus, I don't see that Kennedy would have handled Vietnam any different than Johnson did with the same cabinet (particularly Robert McNamara at Defense). Once Kennedy deposed Diem, the massive war/troop build-up was a fait accompli.
Second: I don't dispute Nixon's genuine accomplishments, especially those of his foreign policy; nor do I dispute his intellect or political savvy. However, let's bear in mind that he contributed a great deal to his own "Demonization" by virtue of his massive abuse of power that turned the GOP against him as surely as the Democrats (lest they take ALL the blame for soiling his reputation).
I won't pretend Kennedy was a great president. His accomplishments, while impressive, were few. But since we're contrasting with Nixon, I can't pretend he was a great president, either. The good he did was outweighed by the bad--unfortunate but absolutely true.
I think that Nixon's reputation is based not on his "massive abuse of power," but due to a double-standard, according to which actions which Democrats consider "massive abuse of power" when done by Republicans, are ignored when committed by favored presidents (Democrats and Lincoln, whom millions of Democrat voters, including apparently most blacks, assume was a Democrat). Lincoln, for example, had every newspaper that criticized him shut down for the duration. Kennedy initiated at least three plots to assassinate Castro. The Clintons were more a criminal association than a marriage (Travelgate, Filegate, Gropegate, conspiracy to obstruct justice following Vince Foster's suicide, and even a post-administration criminal conspiracy, BVDgate).
(But even as I am acutely aware of Bill and Hillary Clinton's crimes, I credit Bill with being the most fiscally conservative president since Ike.)
As I wrote in July 2004, when after former Clinton National Security Advisor Sandy Berger was caught stealing classified documents from the National Archive (BVDgate), one can't help wondering what American, and even world history, would have looked like, had the American media at the time, instead of being dedicated to the destruction of Pres. Richard M. Nixon, been dedicated to his protection at all costs, pronounced Watergate a non-story, and refused to pursue it. For that is what today's media, dedicated as they are to the preservation of Bill Clinton's legacy, John Kerry's presidential candidacy, and Hillary Clinton's presidential prospects, have done with BVDgate. There never would have been a President Ford, a Vice President Rockefeller, or for that matter, a President Carter. Further down the road, you have to wonder if there would have been a President Reagan, the toppling of the Berlin Wall, or an Islamic World War on America. And to return to the example of journalism, one has to wonder how much of the late 1970s' and 80s' consolidation of leftist power in newsrooms and university journalism faculties that followed, were consequences of the successful campaign to "get" Nixon.
P.S. Verboten "word" 3103 turned out to be "geocities.com." I recall one of the censors demanding I remove all links to my own Web site (at geocities) in an article a few months ago, even though that meant destroying my ability to support statements I was making. At that time, and as recently as a few weeks ago, geocities wasn't yet on the list. I guess the censor in question got it added since then.
24 - Nicholas Stix
P.P.S. The verboten form of 3103 includes "http://" plus a slash at the end of the previously cited term.
25 - Nicholas Stix
P.P.P.S. This infernal machine changed what I wrote! I said that the verboten form includes h-t-t-p plus colon plus double slash, plus the previously cited term, plus a slash at the end.